Wednesday Morning Roundup

Today in the roundup: Congratulations to hand out, reviews of Level Ground Arts’ Sweeney Todd and a sculpture that’ll make you rub your eyes.

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CONGRATULATIONS: Congratulations to Kristin Anderson, the winner of the Cliburn’s third Amateur Piano Video Contest. In winning the contest, the Irving resident guarantees herself a spot in the Seventh International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs in 2015. You can watch her winning entry above. … Congrats also go out to Karen Blessen of Dallas, the winner of a $5,000 Marigold Big Ideas for Good Grant. Blessen plans to use the grant for a school art program designed to help students affect change locally.

THE BUTCHER OF THE BOARDS: If you go to see Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street … be prepared to become a vegetarian for a while after. The show is currently being produced by Level Ground Arts, and it sounds as if everyone is having a good time. “Andi Allen and Shane Strawbridge drive this production with a charming chemistry between them,” Mike Maiella writes on theaterjones.com about the show’s leads. “The real show-stoppers of the evening are the duets between Allen and Strawbridge as on the irreverent ditty ‘A Little Priest’.” Lindsay Wilson has some nice things to say about the leads as well, but other elements were problematic. “Not only is the aural outcome less than stellar, the actors are concentrating so hard on getting the words out that they forget to embody their meaning,” she writes on Front Row. “That translates to: If you can’t hear the lyrics, forget about relying on body language and facial expressions for clues as to what’s going on.” Judge for yourself through Sept. 1.

RUB YOUR EYES: When is a sculpture sometimes 2D and sometimes 3D? When it’s a giant trompe l’oeil piece in New Zealand. Our buddies over at NPR are pretty fascinated with Neil Dawson’s four-story-high Horizons, which looks like a giant piece of paper sitting atop a hill. You will be, too, after checking out the photos at npr.org.

Stephen Becker produces the shows Think and Anything You Ever Wanted to Know for KERA. As part of the Art&Seek team, Stephen produces radio and digital stories, along with the podcast "The Big Screen," with Chris Vognar, movie critic of The Dallas Morning News. View more about Stephen Becker.